


that long dark night of the soul unending (diamond caskets and other prisons you begged for)

by mouseymightymarvellous



Series: tales of gutsy shinobi [14]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Past Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Sakura breaks her own heart. How do you move on when you got everything you ever thought you wanted and it wasn’t enough to save you?
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Sai
Series: tales of gutsy shinobi [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/712554
Comments: 18
Kudos: 104





	that long dark night of the soul unending (diamond caskets and other prisons you begged for)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thekatthatbarks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekatthatbarks/gifts).



Sakura steels herself.

“Sasuke,” she says, just like she’s practiced.

He pauses where he is scouring their bowls, his bag almost packed and resting against a nearby tree. Sakura has been dragging her feet with her portion of their usual morning routine: the fire is still burning to embers, her bedroll is still unfurled, she hasn’t pulled down the last of her traps around the perimeter.

“I’m not— I’m going back to Konoha,” she blurts out, and holds her breath.

“Ah,” Sasuke says, after a moment. “I see.”

Sakura’s breath sits heavily between her ribs, and she aches as Sasuke raises his hand as if to touch her, her chest growing thorns when he drops his hand before he can.

Sakura lets the air leak out of her nose, leaving her empty.

Sasuke places her bowl next to her bedroll, and places his own in his pack before closing it. She watches as he shoulders the bag in a familiar shrug.

He nods slightly. “Be safe, Sakura,” Sasuke says.

Sakura watches as he walks out of the clearing they’ve been camped in, watches as he fades out of sight, out of hearing range, beyond where she can sense him with her chakra.

He’s gone.

It’s done.

He didn’t fight her.

All at once, the strength leaves Sakura’s legs, and she drops into a squat, elbows on her knees and her head bent forward.

He didn’t fight for her.

Sakura opens her mouth, and screams.

Sakura times her journey home so that she can sneak back into Konoha in the middle of the night like a coward.

She doesn’t have it in her to face any of her friends and their questions.

The lights are on in the Hokage Tower, so Sakura heads for Tsunade’s office.

Not for the Hokage. Not for her teacher. But for the woman who, when Sakura showed up one day with a perfect purple diamond crowning her face, leaned down and pressed a kiss there.

Tsunade has survived the loss of every man she’s ever loved, one way or another. What’s one more thing for Sakura to learn at her knee?

The window opens with a familiar “snick”, and there she is in the candlelight: the last hopes and dreams of the Senju, golden and weary in the night.

They stare at each other for a long time, over the sprawl of the desk with its paperwork and the night and the weight of the jewels they bear on their foreheads, and then Tsunade sighs, puts her pen down, pushes herself to her feet.

“Sakura,” she sighs, and it settles over them.

Sakura drops her pack on the ground, and steps forward into Tsunade’s embrace.

She does not weep, but she shakes with the grief of ashen dreams, and Tsunade’s arms tighten around her.

“Oh, my girl,” Tsunade sighs into Sakura’s hair, “you know I wish you happiness.”

Sakura presses her open mouth to Tsunade’s shoulder, and nods against the fabric of her yukata.

“Oh, my brave, brave girl,” Tsunade sighs into the night. “It’s okay now, I’ve got you. You can rest for a while. I know you tried so hard.”

It wasn’t enough.

Sakura is never enough to save them.

She twists her fingers further into Tsunade’s clothing and, again, she opens her mouth and screams.

It’s hard coming home.

She’d thought— She’d hoped— Well. Home isn’t what she thought it was going to mean, and as she eases back into village life, she can’t shake the feeling that everyone is watching, that everyone knows, that everyone can see how she has failed, how she is a creature of disappointment, how she was not enough.

All her hard work and sweat and blood and tears, and it will never be enough.

So Sakura eases back into village life and avoids her friends and tries to resist the urge to let her bangs fall forward to shield her gaze.

Once again, her forehead aches, like she swore it never would, not after she crowned herself in legacy with nothing more than the gore caught under her fingernails and the rage that lives in her bones. What was once her pride is now her shame and, if nothing else, she could hate Sasuke for turning her into this.

But he isn’t here.

He’s never here.

He’s never been here.

Sakura’s grief has never belonged to anyone other than herself.

(And that’s always been the saddest thing about it.)

“How much longer are you going to avoid us?” Sai asks as he climbs through her window.

Sakura considers throwing a pillow at him, but it seems like too much effort so, instead, she stays where she is on her bed, staring blankly up at her ceiling.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep Naruto distracted,” he continues as he lies down next to her, their elbows bumping. “And I don’t know how much longer I should keep Naruto distracted. This can’t possibly be healthy, but Ino said you would need time to yourself. Have you had enough time?”

The mortification is hot and heavy as it curls through her veins. Sakura pushes the heel of her palm against her breastbone, and when that isn’t enough to quell the ache, she curls over onto her side into a ball, her back to Sai.

It’s an admission of weakness, which only drives the pain deeper, until she’s panting with it, how much she wants it out, how much she wants out, how much she wants to disappear.

Sai shifts his weight on her bed until she can feel the heat of him along her back, but he keeps some amount of inches between them, enough that they don’t touch.

He breathes deeply. “Tell me if you want me to leave,” he finally says.

Sakura doesn’t answer.

They lie on her bed as the room shifts slowly into darkness.

It’s not a restful quiet, but eventually Sakura can let her hand fall away and her thighs unclench, and then she falls into exhausted sleep.

“Do you want breakfast?” Sai asks from her stovetop when Sakura shuffles into the alcove that marks out her kitchen.

She wraps her robe tighter around herself, arms crossed over her stomach, and falls into one of the chairs at her tiny table. “No,” Sakura says, and drops her forehead down to rest on the recently cleaned surface.

Sai rattles around, and something boils. Sakura doesn’t move.

She startles when Sai settles a mug next to her face, but he stills her with a palm to the back of her neck.

“I don’t understand why you’re sad,” Sai tells her. “You tried your best. You always do. That’s all you can ever ask of yourself.”

“I was supposed to be better,” Sakura says.

“I was supposed to be enough,” Sakura does not say.

“Sakura,” Sai says after a heavy pause, his voice shot through with something she is too tired to analyze, “I hope one day you can believe that you don’t have to martyr yourself to deserve things. It’s not always your fault. It’s not always yours to fix. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved; it doesn’t mean you are lacking that you can’t provide a miracle that someone never asked for.”

He says it so gently, but it rips through her like a blade.

Why not? She wants to scream. Why shouldn’t she be permitted a miracle? These bloody hands and all the strength she has clawed back for her own and, still, she is not enough for miracles.

It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that her dreams alone are ashes in her mouth.

“You don’t have to be a maker of miracles,” Sai says, because he was a boy raised with a blade in his hand, “to be enough.”

Sakura says nothing, instead of screaming at him for being a liar.

Sai lets himself out of her front door.

Sakura lets the tea go cold in its mug, her forehead aching against the tabletop, and doesn’t move for a long time.

If nothing else is true, Sakura has learned, the world does not stop for her grief.

Life goes on.

So does she.

She’s so practiced at it, after all. It’s habit, by now.

“A mission for you,” Tsunade says.

She’s the Hokage today.

“You’ve been missed. There’s work for you to do.”

Maybe not just the Hokage today.

Sakura digs her fingers into the problem at hand, and surrenders to the work, like it’s enough to remake her into something new.

Naruto’s not a complete idiot, so he conspicuously does not talk about Sasuke or why Sakura has returned on her own, and instead gossips about the paperwork Shizune dumps on him and his last spar with Lee and Tenten’s three most recent unreasonable weapon purchases and the latest news from Suna by way of Gaara. Sakura appreciates and resents his tact in turns, and she hates herself for how she can’t decide whether to let herself bask in his warmth or lash out like a wild, cornered thing, accepting his presence and sneering at it in turns.

Ino shows up at her apartment and pokes at her with sly comments and slyer looks until Sakura boils over with it and they get into a screaming match that ends with Sakura sobbing in Ino’s lap where she sits with her back against a wall. They go for ice cream the next afternoon, and Sakura even puts on a swipe of lip gloss before heading out without feeling like a fraud.

Kakashi-sensei avoids her except for when he lets her track him down to sit next to him on a random bench somewhere in the village where he reads with an occasional chuckle and she simply tips her head back to the sun and breathes.

Slowly, Sakura adjusts to being back home, and only sometimes does she ache down to her toes for all the ways it is not what she thought she wanted.

She doesn’t know what she wants anymore.

She doesn’t know if she’s ever really known what she wants.

“Tell me if you want me to leave,” Sai says, every time he climbs through her window.

Sakura stays on her back, watching the ceiling, watching the day sink down around her, colours arching across the boards.

She never does.

She doesn’t know what to do with that, so she doesn’t do anything with it at all.

“What happened?” Naruto finally asks her, months and months later.

There’s a rock wedged uncomfortably beneath her calf, so Sakura simply brings her knees up, shifting her head in Naruto’s lap until she’s settled again. He goes back to running his fingers through her hair.

“You were finally— You and Sasuke finally had your chance.”

Sakura’s fingers feel along the seam of her breastbone, but the ache there is old and dull, more memory than anything else.

“I don’t think,” Sakura answers through a smile that maybe one day will no longer be bitter, “we ever really did, Naruto. I don’t think we did have a chance. Not after everything.”

“I don’t—”

“I wasn’t what Sasuke wanted,” Sakura says, like a scalpel, “or maybe just we didn’t want the same thing, or maybe just not the same way. I don’t know. I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know if we ever had a chance for it to ever go right.”

“But it was your dream,” Naruto says, lost and heavy with grief (for her or for Sasuke or for all of them, she doesn’t know). “You fought so hard, for so long.”

Sakura smiles up at him, and hopes that one day she won’t sound so bitter when she says, “I know you’ll never believe it, Naruto, because it isn’t your way, but sometimes— Sometimes no amount of fight will ever be enough.”

Naruto frowns, and Sakura can almost imagine what he’ll look like in thirty years when time and grief and responsibility have carved their lines into his face. “Maybe,” he says, “oh, Sakura-chan, maybe you just haven’t been fighting the fight you thought you were.”

“Tell me if you want me to leave,” Sai says, as ritual.

Sakura rolls onto her side to face him as he lies down.

“Do you think,” she asks, “that I could have saved Sasuke? If I had just stayed, that I could have been enough?”

Sai turns his head so that he can look her in the eye.

“No.”

Sakura inhales sharply, and tries to sit up, tries to get out, tries to—

Sai stops her with a hand to her cheek.

“The only person we can ever really save is ourself. You deserve more, Sakura, then ruining yourself for a man who never asked you to save him.”

Sakura bites sharply down on her tongue, on the impulse to cry.

“I wanted to be enough,” she says, the words creeping out of her like rot.

Sai doesn’t move his hand. “You are enough. Now let yourself believe it.”

It’s just past dawn, and the sun cresting the horizon scatters through the dew.

Sakura breathes in the morning and the remnants of rain and the shreds of her courage.

Sai doesn’t say anything as she comes to stand at his elbow, his gaze focused on the middle distance, his brush steady in his hand, just waiting for motion.

“Sai,” she finally says.

He tilts his head in acknowledgement but doesn’t look at her, and the absence of the stillness of those dark eyes on her leaves her the space between her ribs to keep breathing.

“I don’t— I need time. I’m not ready yet.”

He does turn then and, despite her fear, Sakura continues to breath steadily.

“You’ll tell me, if you want me to leave?”

It’s like buds are curling in her palms, but Sakura’s lungs are clear.

“I want to believe,” she says.

His smile is slow and small, but it pierces through her like the sun coming over the horizon, but it soothes her like the quiet after a long awaiting rain.

“You’ll get there,” Sai says. “After all, you’re the one who taught me how.”

Sakura reaches up and presses her hand to his ribs.

“I thought you said that we can only save ourselves.”

Sai rests his palm over the back of her hand, pressing her touch tighter against his breastbone.

“I think you saved yourself a long time ago, Sakura. One day, I think you’ll forgive yourself for it. I hope you do, because I am so glad you did. But don’t do it for me.”

Ah.

She did, didn’t she?

All these times she has been a girl in a forest with desperation between her teeth and blood under her nails, cutting pieces out of herself to survive.

It wasn’t supposed to be so hard, she’d thought.

“I need time,” Sakura tells him.

“You have it, as much as you need, as much as you want.”

Sakura doesn’t know what she wants.

Sakura doesn’t know if she’s ever really understood what she wants.

But the sun is rising and there is dew on the ground and there is a boy holding her palm to his heart like she could maybe be trusted to hold it one day.

Maybe it’s enough.

Maybe for another moment it can be enough.

Maybe one day she’ll know what she wants, and it won’t be a matter of it needing to be enough, of her needing to be enough.

“Tell me if you want me to leave,” Sai says.

“Stay with me,” Sakura answers. “Stay with me.”

And he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Kat asked for "petrichor: the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of dry weather".


End file.
